55. Bodies of Water

What floats
this close to shore
exulted by the viridian tide?
Some mossy detritus
(dead animal? driftwood?
all organic,
all party to decomposition)
–and sometimes my body a buoy
on the waves.

Lord,
when you shine down
from the far side of thunderclouds
in your lieutenant shafts of light

let me not neglect
to hide my face.

Let me heed the word
braided in rays
before the keen pebbles of sunlight
on the water
dazzle and drown me,

the unincorporated command
instructing the body’s mirror:
reflect.

return

August’s over, time to begin again.

brief hiatus

There are now 50-odd first drafts I put up here; I need a break. Regularly programming to return in September, possibly sooner.

54. Closest Shore (2)

A vacation house on the edge
of the Atlantic Ocean stands erect
in the near-darkness after sunset.
Even in early August the season
has started to shift,
passing the apex of temperatures and visitors
brought to this seaside town.
A young man at the kitchen counter
chops mushrooms for a late dinner and,
hearing his mother make an off-hand comment
about the stove, pauses
knife hanging over the cuttingboard
while he is suddenly moved by a deep
and elegant tide of sadness
because his childhood home no longer exists.
Outside the blackness condenses
and the waves become the same void color
as the air.
A moon breaks the horizon
and the man goes back to chopping,
cutting the mushrooms finer and finer.
Dear heart, when did the darkness fall
on our salt-whitened shores?
When did the waves stop
keeping us up at night?

53. Closest Shore

A vacation house on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean
stands erect in the near-darkness of sunset.
A young man standing at the kitchen counter
chopping mushrooms hears his mother
make a comment about the stove and pauses,
knife hanging over the cuttingboard
suddenly moved by a deep and elegant tide of sadness
because his childhood home no longer exists.
Outside the blackness condenses
and the waves become the same
void color as the air.
Early August but already
the season starts to shift,
passing the apex of temperatures and visitors.
A moon breaks the horizon
and the man goes back to chopping
cutting the mushrooms finer and finer.
Dear heart, when did the darkness fall
on our salt-white sand?
When did the waves
stop keeping us up at night?

52. Nightclub

We showed those bankers
a thing or two about
how to move
on the tabletop;
that it’s easier to impress women
by dancing than with
bottle service,
even if the champagne comes with
a sparkler tied to the bottleneck.
The last night of July was swelter.
Inside the club and out
the temperature stayed high
right on through
and we danced into August
with the cavernous skyline of the Bund
grim across the river,
the skyscapers one by one
shutting the lights off
for the night.

51. Night Falls

Dark lines the fields behind the house.
Midwest, what a sweet song
the sound of an early dusk,
breath drawn into pockets of darkness
growing heavier, fuller.
Into those little inland seas
you could throw your childhood,
the tune your father would whistle in the garden,
anything.
And out would walk a solitary deer
nibbling at the humid grass,
collecting the shapes of night in silence.

50. Answers

It’s a harsh life
no matter pretty much who you are
there’s no thing
called enough,
and when we die
we go into the ground alone.
Still, sometimes there’s solace
in forgetting time, in going
after a snow and freeze to step
onto the cracked ice fields of winter
where I am mostly still the small child I was
crying God’s name in the stillness.

49. Remembering

Sitting in a cafe I read a poem noting the feeling
of Autumn wind and that season’s sunlight
and realized I had forgotten the sensation wholely.
I’ve been living in California too long
and this summer has been too damn hot.
I read somewhere that memories aren’t really
the mind recollecting facts so much as
tricking itself into re-experiencing an imagined situation.
The parts of my brain set aside for
October air movements have been neglected
to the point of loss, no feeling left
just a vision of massive cumulonimbus clouds
over the plains. I can still see them,
flat and still in the sky, but my mind
forgets how to give me skill the cihll
of the air beneath them. Memories come,
and go. This autumn maybe I’ll relearn
the feeling of the changing wind. For now,
though, I’ll still read poems in the August heat
and watch women fawn over a passing strollered baby,
something we need no memory to love
instinct showing us in those chubby limbs
and bulging eyes the face of the future.

48. Upon Reading a Poem Mentioning the Autumn Wind

Lately my memories of fall do not
still hold their shape and saturation but
instead become pale visions only shot
through with the images of thunder shut
into high clouds in blue, and blue, and whtie
filling the sky. My skin lacks the cold twinge
of that season, the mind keeps only light
not the bitterness of the autumn since
in leaves, drawn coats, the same necessity
as last year, but it still feels new. Summer,
here now, erases all of this. City
upon the plains, I want you as mother
and old familiar home; I’ve lived too long
in California, all memory gone.